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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast,
Speaker 2:a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I made the mistake of asking my new therapist if she really thought she could help me. She told me I'm already doing it. She's just walking beside me. I really don't understand how things are going so well, so quickly, so easily with my new therapist. Something's just working.
Speaker 1:Somehow I'm safe enough. Somehow we're connecting enough. Somehow that last session with my last therapist was powerful enough that it's like someone built a bridge and I'm not in the water anymore. Like I was able to walk down the ramp to get off the boat altogether, like being back on land, back in therapy. She said we don't have to add expectation to or to anything else that is already hard.
Speaker 1:That when things are hard, that is hard enough. We don't have to add expectation to it. She said it, like, five times in different ways. Then she even added that we could add softness to therapy, like turning out the light because there's so much light coming in the window or getting stuffies to have nearby or even a blanket in my lap just to be comfortable. Being comfortable in therapy doesn't mean therapy's easy.
Speaker 1:We've been talking about the price of admission book and my work in Al Anon and my steps and all the things and even my homework from the symposium about writing new contracts for myself instead of maintaining those social contracts from childhood. The scariest thing about that is making other people have big feelings when I don't fulfill those contracts because I'm writing new ones. Are other people getting uncomfortable when I set boundaries? My therapist said that's fine. That's okay.
Speaker 1:She said they can have big feelings or struggle with the things to do. It's their job to manage them. That that's part of what I'm letting go of is managing other people's feelings. She said, when I feel guilt about it or even a false shame, it's a sign that I'm being exploited, that attachment has been weaponized against me as one of those prices of admission. She said there are all kinds of ships, meaning relationships.
Speaker 1:She calls them the ships, friendships, partnerships, work relationships, play relationships, social relationships, recovery relationships, community relationships, all the ships. I told her that I know all relationships have ruptures and that healthy ones repair them. She said sometimes it's okay for ships to just be nearby and that some things don't need repairing or at least repairing by complexity to what I had been learning last year but made sense in the context of price of admission. She said in healthy ships that shame and guilt will not be attached to how I show up in the world because otherwise that's control, intentional or not. It's like saying my ship is bad, the wrong shape, the wrong kind, the wrong time, the wrong place.
Speaker 1:My therapist said, it's your ship. You get to show up if and when you're ready, as you're ready, how you're ready. And when nearby ships are safe ships, they just let you be, and everything else happens naturally. And that doesn't result in ruptures. So we talked about what are my nearby ships, who are my nearby ships, and how those ships are already helping me heal.
Speaker 1:She said all ships have capacity to help us heal relational trauma and that every time we have an experience that is reparative, it heals the original ships, the memory time things from childhood. I told her then that part of me felt like it was super weird that therapy was already working. She said it sounds like part of me is judging as weird what she would judge as vulnerable. And in the context of talking about vulnerability, we talked about a podcast by Doctor. Tema, who spoke at ISSTD annual conference, the homecoming podcast.
Speaker 1:I can put a link to it in the show notes. On her podcast, she said, if I truly love myself, I will not neglect myself. She said, I don't wanna hear what affirmations you use. I wanna hear how much you slept last night and what you ate yesterday. Those are healthy ships, my therapist said.
Speaker 1:Doctor. Tema said, why do we stress out so much about other people? They're being the same person they already were when we met them. She said, you invited them in. You can invite yourself out.
Speaker 1:That was the part where my therapist went back again to talk about how other people's big feelings are theirs to manage, just like my feelings are mine to manage. Doctor. Tema said, My trauma impacted me, but does not define me. My mistakes and even consequences impact me, but do not define me. There is no shame that is mine to carry.
Speaker 1:I had to write that down and put it on a sticky by my computer. There is no shame that is mine to carry. And when we're talking about attachment being weaponized and guilt and shame being exploited, Doctor. Tema said the reason mean words and ugly tones hurt so much is because they resonate with what we already believe about ourselves. She said how other people have mistreated me, ridiculed me, or gossiped about me is not actually my shame.
Speaker 1:Shame is someone else's baggage and that I need to stop putting that weight on five year old me. And in now time, she said, because of shame put on me by other people, I could not even see myself. And because I could not see myself, I chose jobs and friends and relationships who could not see me either. I cannot get any of those healthy until I learn to see myself. Because shame blocks me from loving myself.
Speaker 1:I cannot love myself while I believe I am unlovable. And challenging it further, she said, I owe myself an apology. I am sorry I took me there. I am sorry I stayed in that place. I am sorry I neglected my own needs.
Speaker 1:I am sorry I did not speak up for myself sooner. I am so sorry. And also, this is not to beat myself up. It's acknowledging to let go of it, to get out, to put it down, to stay away, and to learn to forgive myself. We find compassion for ourselves by looking at context.
Speaker 1:The choices we made make sense given what we had experienced up until that point. And the ways I have been treated are not a reflection of my worth. I cannot base my identity, my worth, or my value on the opinions of those who want to see me fail. That was really meaningful for me in particular, because in step four in recovery, we do that inventory of ourselves. Not just about here are all the mistakes I made or what's hard about me or what I don't like about myself, but also what are my strengths?
Speaker 1:What have I got going right? What do I do well? And seeing that accurately, which is really hard for those of us who never had an attachment mirror in the first place, and so don't even know who we are. My therapist said, I learn who I am from nearby ships who see me accurately. She said ships help us go somewhere, and that's one way of measuring health.
Speaker 1:By which ships help bring me closer to myself and which ships take me further away from myself. And that sometimes is the beginning of learning to see the difference. Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this.